Suffering teaches us to love

By Ottrisha Carter

Ottrisha is an author, doctoral student and parishioner of St Martin de Porres RC Church, Coryal.

We’re living in very uncertain times, when our faith is being tested and our future seems to be unpredictable. We’re all struggling in one way or another, either physically, emotionally, spiritually or financially. However, God does not desire that we give our struggles the opportunity to prevent us from living the life that He has in store for us. “The God of all grace who called you to His eternal glory through Christ [Jesus] will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little” (1 Pet 5:10).

It’s easy for us to view our sufferings as bad luck or obstacles that keep coming our way. All of us have experienced suffering in different ways. Maybe we’ve been hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, criticised, condemned, diagnosed with an illness or experienced hurt in another way. However, St Gemma Galgani reminds us, “If you really want to love Jesus, first learn to suffer, because suffering teaches you to love.” Our sufferings can never be compared to the tremendous amount of pain Jesus underwent to save each one of us and give us the opportunity to experience life in Him.

If we do some deep retrospection of those difficult periods in our lives when we felt as if our lives were crumbling in front of our eyes and God seemed to have abandoned us, we would be able to acknowledge God’s presence in all these trials. According to St John of

the Cross, “Love does not consist in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved God.” Sometimes our sufferings teach us the importance of remaining detached from worldly, material things. We can easily become attached to people or things that we make gods in our lives but through our sufferings we are reminded that God is the Only Person to whom we should become attached.

Some of us might have never realised the importance of keeping the Lord’s day holy, if the coronavirus pandemic had not restricted us from attending Masses physically. Before COVID, some of us allowed other engagements to prevent us from being present at Mass. However, COVID came and really showed us how we were taking God for granted. The longing to be physically reunited at Masses seemed unbearable for many people.

FilipinoCardinal Luis Antonio Tagle in his Easter message last year stated, “In the midst of loss, uncertainty and suffering, something incredible is happening: we are noticing the bonds which form our human family. Bonds that we previously took for granted or ignored.”

Last year, being forced to stay at home when we were accustomed to living very busy lives, really helped us to find creative ways to continue our journeys with the Lord and each other. No-one is an island, so we all need people to help us on our journeys whether we believe it or not. Unfortunately, some people believe that their faith journey is between himself or herself and God. Although we are all on different journeys and it is impossible for everyone to understand our journeys, God is always with us and He sends

the people who are meant to journey with us and these people will guide us in His direction and lead us closer to Him.

Henri Nouwen once said, “Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world.” As we continue on our journeys with the Lord, let’s open our hearts to God and allow our sufferings to teach us to love others, especially those people who have hurt us in the past.